Compare and contrast compactflash or microdrives for me please?
In terms of how these drives behave or interact with the linux kernel (or EPOC kernel) there is no difference. They are just IDE disks. Compactflash disks have a limited number of writes that they can make, although they are intelligent about how they write data. It would take extensive, repeated disk writes to come close to wearing out a compactflash drive. Microdrives have mini platters in them and don’t have any writing limitations. Microdrives may be more suitable for using swap space than compactflash cards. However, microdrives are a mechanical drive, and hence will draw more power than compactflash cards – your netbook will run out of battery power a little sooner (how much sooner? dunno.) Microdrives make a very slight, barely noticeable, whirring sound, while compactflash cards are silent solid state devices..The relative speeds of compactflash and microdrives is unknown, but likely to be highly variable depending on brand of compactflash and microdrive. Speed is largely irrel
